Why?

7.22.2011

Commence Field Day!

Back when you are in elementary school, the term 'field day' might evoke images of potato sack races, three-legged races, and water balloon tosses. If you served any time in the Navy though, you realize that a true field day is much less fun, and is actually shipwide focus on 'deep cleaning, and getting in the bilges and the outboards'. Usually, field day is done on Friday mornings, and everyone participates, even if you just got off the mid-watch.

Much fun is had by all. Woe be to you who is not caught moving fast enough, or god forbid, caught napping in the outboards by the Chief of the Boat.

Anyway, it seems appropriate that today is Friday, and with my wife and kids coming home today from my mom's house, I will soon find myself giving the apartment a nice thorough once over. Luckily, I will have at least four hours lead time, assuming my wife lets me know when she actually leaves. I actually don't have that much stuff to do...The girls room is squared away, our bedroom just needs the bed to be made, the kitchen looks fine...it's basically just folding the last three loads of clothes which are sitting on the living room chair(and brushing cat hair off them...of course the cat likes snuggling in piles of warm, clean clothes), and a final vacuuming in the living room, while starting to make dinner preps.

Meanwhile, watching the video of the police officer confronting a CCW holder in Canton, Ohio is not putting me in the mood to get started anytime soon. If you haven't seen the video, you won't have to look hard for it...Tamara's got a link to it on her site, as do about a million other folks.

As I stated at her site, I am one of the first to point out I KNOW I don't have the temperament to be a police officer. If only the officer in this video had been as equally honest to himself, he might not be getting increasingly famous on the internet right now. From the start, even before he confronts the driver, it is obvious this guy was somewhat unstable, and looking to 'put some lumps' on someone. He threatens the two passengers with acts of physical violence several times before even beginning his tirade against the driver.

I feel very bad for the many, many, GOOD police officers out there, who often get smeared by people painting with a broad brush after events like this...

statement

"What did I want?

I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, "The games' afoot!" I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin. I wanted Prester John and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon.

I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be -- instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is."
-- Glory Road, Robert Heinlein